


Repeating Fate

by StrawhatsAndDelibirds



Category: One Piece
Genre: Solitude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 01:58:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6219169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrawhatsAndDelibirds/pseuds/StrawhatsAndDelibirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I give this neglected Skeleton some love.<br/>And then laugh because I'm as dead inside as he is on the outside and maybe also inside</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repeating Fate

To say that he was shocked when he came to was an understatement. Death was something that you just recovered from, and there was no one around them for miles as one by one his crew took their final breath and then succumb to the poison that coated the weapons that lead to their demise. He knew those were his final moments as he collapsed at the piano. Seeing as though that was where he woke up, it was clear that no one had saved him and there was no miracle nurse that had come and saved him and his crew.

The second shock he received was when he looked down and didn’t see his normal beautiful dark skin, but rather bone as white as snow that stood out brightly against both the dark colour of his suit and of the wood on his ship. Looking around, there was nothing but skeletons where his crew once lay. He ran to the rail and looked over to confirm his suspicions.

Nothing could’ve prepared him for what he saw. Not even the fact that he had seen his hands prior to running over, and the skeletons all around him. A scream escaped his body as he stared down at the very face of death that stared back at him with equal shock.

What he had saw before wasn’t a dream. No that really was his soul finding and re-entering his body. That really was as long as it seemed, and now he was alone on a ship with nothing but the bones of his fallen comrades and crew mates. And as his screams stopped, he found something out about his ship that he had never really know before.

The silence on it was absolutely deafening.

Sure there was the sound of the sea around him as it gently rocked the boat, but it didn’t make the once lively ship seem less dead. Not even the worst of storms could make this silence any more bearable. Because no matter what hour of the day, it always seemed like someone was playing something. They were a very musical crew, and they took great pride in that.

But with him as the only survivor (and survivor being used loosely), it was just wrong and it left him uneasy. It felt like the very silence would simply swallow him up and leave no trace behind, and with that, leave all trace of the Rumbar Pirates to disappear forever. Forgotten.

Truly that was a fate worse than death. But at the same time, it also felt like being the lone survivor was an equally terrible fate. Especially since he wasn’t exactly sure how one would go about killing a skeleton. And given his current state, it wasn’t really something that he wanted to think about.

But as the captain of the late Rumbar Pirates, it felt wrong to just accept death so readily after he had been given a second chance. Starvation and dehydration didn’t really seem like plausible ways for him to die anymore, and he was sure that they had enough tea stored on the ship to last decades. Sure it would have lost all flavour, and he wasn’t quite sure how well it would taste with sea water, but he had to wash up against an island soon enough so he could restock a little.

In the meantime, however, he could play some music to pass the time. He had really nothing but at this point. He could scream, so that was a pretty good indicator that he could talk, if not sing. But that might get a little complicated seeing as though he had no lips or tongue to make words with. But he could still scream without vocal cords or lungs, so who knew at this point what he could do.

But right now he seemed to be in the mood for some violin. His violin always seemed to make him feel better, and it might’ve been because a lot of the songs from his childhood seemed to sound better on the violin than they did on the piano. Those were really his only instruments on the boat, and using his fallen crew’s instruments just seemed wrong. Those were theirs, and they treasured them dearly. Even in death, they were too important for him to just use as he saw fit.

And so he sat on deck, among the death, and stared out to sea. His lone violin seemed to be enough to ward off the feeling that he was going to be consumed completely by the silence, but it still didn’t make him feel any less incredibly lonely on deck. He supposed it couldn’t be helped at this point. He was, after all, completely alone at sea right now.

Days turned to weeks, and he continued to play. He could feel the hunger, but it wasn’t really something that he could do much about. It seemed as though all the food on the ship had rotted away, and fishing didn’t seem to be doing much for him either. Skeletons didn’t really need to eat, but it seemed to be something that he should do.

Sleep seemed to be something that happen on occasion, as things went black on occasion, and then when he came too, it seemed to be a completely different time of day. It was a little concerning, but at the same time it wasn’t as it he had much to worry about. There was nothing on the ship, and his himself was already dead. If they came across him sleeping, then he would be seen as just another skeleton, and he’d be ignored.

The weeks became months, and somewhere around that time, one of his stings broke and hit him in the face.

“Ah, I should be more careful. I could put an eye out. Wait a moment. I don’t have any eyes! Yohohohohohoho.. hoho… ho…” Jokes were a lot less fun to make when there was no one around to share them with. It was bad enough when you had someone who just didn’t react to it, but when it was just you for the foreseeable future, they somehow got a lot less funny a lot faster.

It was even less funny when one of his strings broke. He was sure that he had some more strings somewhere, but he really didn’t feel like getting them. He could make do with three for now.

A trio.

Months went by, and turned into years. He was now finding more things to do. He tried to fend off against sleep as much as he could. As pleasant as his dreams were, it just made the reality of waking up all that more hard. How he would’ve preferred a nightmare from time to time and not the faces of his dearly miss crewmates cheering with him and egging him on to sing with them. But it gave him all the more reason to play his violin.

And then a second string broke.

“I guess it didn’t stand a ghost of a chance… Yohoho.. hoho.. ho..” God he missed having someone, _anyone_ , around to at least react to his jokes. Even the really bad ones. Especially the really bad ones. He still didn’t fell up to changing the strings. He’d just have to make do with two now.

A duet.

He had given up trying to figure out what day it was a long time ago. He had been cursed with the cruelest form of immortality. An eternity of solitude out at sea, but he’d stay strong. His crew would want him to keep his head held high.

So he played. He played to chase away the loneliness and silence. Because so long as he had his violin, he could pretend, even for a moment, that this was just a really long night watch. And once the night passed, dawn would come, and everything would be okay again. The silence would break, and he wouldn’t be alone.

He played for a dawn that never came, but he played. He played until a third string broke.

He didn’t even have a joke for that one. Nothing came to mind.

He still had his piano and his own voice. And he could easily just replace the string. But he just stared blankly at the sea for who knows how long. If he had tears left, he’d’ve cried. He had felt a pain similar to this one before. It almost felt silly to sympathise with an instrument, especially one with such an easily remedied problem.

But maybe it had to do with the fact that it had been in his life for so long that it had become a part of him, and that even his own tragic fate seemed to be repeating itself through it. A treasured instrument that was now withering away to nothing over time, just like he was. An instrument that had lost the rest of its band, and was doomed to the same fate he was. A suffocating silence without their teamwork in their seemingly useless crusade against it and the loneliness that he felt right now.

A cursed fate that seemed to be shared between the two of them acting as one, just as it had been for him and the ship’s piano in his final moments as a human and not the cursed monster that he was now doomed to live his life as now because of that damn fruit that he had a single bite of on a whim that one time what felt like it had been millions of years ago now.

There was only one thing that he could truly call their shared fate.

A solo.


End file.
